Post-Christmas maintenance

Our expert plantsman Andrew gives his top tips on jobs to do in the garden and indoors this month.

If you’d like to get some free advice from Andrew and the plantaria team why not send us a message via social media, pop in for a chat.

Carry out a post-Christmas check up

Check up on your houseplants and keep them in tip-top condition and they’ll continue to give you a colourful display for ages.

Make sure all plants are well watered when needed but make sure you don’t overdo it.

Flowering houseplants should be dead-headed regularly and given a weekly to fortnightly feed with a flowering houseplant fertiliser.

Foliage plants need regular hand misting or standing on a saucer of damp pebbles or Hortag to maintain humidity around the leaves.

Save water

Everyone wants to save money on their water bill and one way you can do this is by installing a water butt, which creates a handy source of water that’s perfect for many plants, especially rhododendrons, azaleas and other lime haters.

We sell easy to install kits that will link your water butts to each other and to the down pipes of your house or garage – perfect for saving all that rain water.

Pest patrol

Temperatures indoors are perfect for pests and diseases to thrive. Keep a close eye on plants in the house, greenhouse or conservatory for whitefly, red spider mite, aphids, scale insects and mealybug.

Grey mould can be a problem in the greenhouse, so keep watering to a minimum, avoid splashing water about and ventilate whenever the weather conditions allow.

Tidying up outdoors and removing any dead plant debris will take away the hiding places for various insect pests.